A political message about beggars in Stockholm’s Östermalmstorg subway station.
Stockholm beggars, still clogging streets, store entrances, and subway entrances throughout the city, reflect a problem all of Sweden is experiencing. The beggars come primarily from Romania and employ such identical passive approaches that it’s hard to believe they aren’t shown, by some phantom figure (boss), exactly what they are to do.
Stockholm beggars
I wrote extensively about beggars in Stockholm a year ago, describing links between these beggars and organized crime syndicates in Romania. I then traveled to Romania to further research organized crime and human trafficking of beggars (and pickpockets). The comments posted to these articles, and others, reveal the divisive split among Swedes who, as a friend of mine quips, are either beggar-huggers or xenophobes.
Thus, the stage is set for a polarizing political agenda, which the Sweden Democrat Party has just taken to a new venue: the Stockholm subway system. There, bold text in English begins:
“Sorry about the mess here in Sweden. We have a serious problem with forced begging. International gangs profit from people’s desperation. Goverment [sic] won’t do what’s needed. But we will!”
The party has taken this anti-begging platform to the subway platform where, ironically, one is likely to have just witnessed the very subject of the platform immediately before coming face to typeface with its blatant message. One must step around at least one sprawling beggar at virtually every subway door.
Why is this audacious political message in English? Why is it in the subway at all? Well, the public transport system can’t discriminate among advertisers, so it can’t stop the ad campaign. And though the ad pretends to inform foreign visitors, it is obviously speaking to Swedish voters (who practically all speak English).
If you visited Sweden four or more years ago, you doubtless remember the pristine condition of public and private spaces. One can’t help but notice the stark difference today. Beggars languish here and there on pavements made filthy with dark stains. Stuffed black trash bags are piled near each beggar, sometimes in baby strollers or shopping carts. Laundry is spread on the ground around some beggars, along with beverage cups, food packets, and blankets. The areas they squat look like mini-slums.
The message in the subway specifically targets forced begging, which is the heart of the controversy in Sweden. Are these beggars organized and trafficked by crime bosses? Or are they desperately poor, unable to get help in their home countries, and seeking a better life in a rich nation full of possibilities? Or are they seeking a lifetime of handouts with no intention to immerse themselves in a new culture, learn the language, seek gainful employment?
The beggar-huggers must believe that all these East European beggars—all several thousand of them—came as sole and separate individuals; and that each is uneducated, each unable to work—yet each has organized herself (most of these beggars are women), traveled herself, found her own begging place and sleeping place, her own laminated family photo to display… It’s impossible to imagine these passive women, who at most now whimper “hej-hej” (hello) to passersby, mustering the gumption to attempt such an international endeavor.
The xenophobes blame immigrants for the mess. Others cry racial foul. But the hatred isn’t for an ethnic group—it’s for a work ethic. Begging has been a rare phenomenon in Sweden, therefore arousing real sympathy. Altruistic Swedes readily opened their purses. Now, with a beggar on every corner and ubiquitous rumblings of organization by crime syndicates, Swedes are uncertain, confused, afraid to trust their innate generosity, and afraid of what others will think of them if they don’t.
Pickpocket boss in Venice, proclaims the photo poster taped up all over Venice.
Venice pickpockets are identified on a poster taped up all over Venice. Take a good look and you’ll realize it’s pretty hopeless to identify and avoid them by face alone. They look like any women. Italian? Maybe. Foreign tourist? Sure.
The crowds are thick and move slowly through the narrow Venetian alleys. Families with strollers are road blocks, and day-trippers laden with shopping bags bump along causing bottlenecks with their wide loads. Oglers, window-shoppers, umbrella-hoisting tour leaders of the timid, hoards of school children, and counterfeit bag sellers all slow the flow of traffic to less than a crawl.
Good news for the pickpocket! For a pickpocket, the only situation better than a tight crowd is a tight crowd that can’t move.
Venice pickpockets
Venice pickpockets. A poster taped up all over Venice.Graffiti in Venice. And a part of the Thiefhunters in Paradise bannerhead.
And yet, somehow, the wily, invisible thief insinuates herself in amongst the happy, distracted people, the hot and bothered people, and slips away like that elusive kernel in the popcorn bowl.
Pickpocketing is not a natural phenomenon in this island labyrinth. Without the crowds, it’s a city unsuitable for escape, and too expensive in which to live.
Venice pickpockets vigilantes
Venice has a vigilante-sort of group, developed in 1996, called “Cittadini non Distratti,” (Undistracted Citizens). Made up of retired businessmen, it had about 400 members some years ago when Bob and I met its founder. They are the eyes and ears against pickpockets, since the paid police do not do anything. Shop merchants and locals call one of ten “operatives” when they see pickpockets or suspicious characters. Operatives zoom over quickly and investigate, then call the police pickpocket squad (which used to be a force of six. Without checking, I’m willing to bet there are no dedicated officers left at all). Renato Serena, back then head of the group, had handcuffs, a sort-of badge he flashed, and the quasi-authority to arrest. Locals prefer to call the vigilante group over the police because of all the governmental red tape, reports, redundancy, going down to station.
The Municipale Police are only interested in Venice, Signore Serena told us, not in Italy or Europe. The squad can’t really arrest or jail; they “just open the door to the next city so the problem become’s someone else’s.”
Serena claimed that the pickpockets were 90% Romanians—even way back then. They can’t afford to live in Venice, but stay with friends in apartments on the mainland with the gang leader. The boss, he said, makes a lot of money and owns a restaurant and hotel back in Romania. After the leader was deported to Romania, the pickpocket gang was not as successful. The leader had guided the team, telling them when/where/who to hit.
In July 2013, the frustrated group announced that they were photographing known pickpockets and posting their pictures around the city. According to recent news reports, Cittadini non Distratti is still active, still saving tourists from pickpockets.
Pickpocket paradise, but still requires nerve and patience
Luciano’s morning hit was tense. He had ridden the trams during what should have been rush-hour, but for the relative desertion of the business world. The city was shut, shop fronts literally shuttered and padlocked for the summer holidays. Luciano had tried and failed four times that first hour, backing off each attempt at the last second. Once the tram lurched and he bumped clumsily into his mark, and once he thought he was noticed by someone sitting nearby. The other two efforts just weren’t right—he couldn’t get the right angle.
Who are the pickpockets? Waiting to board on a blistering day.Pickpocket paradise: a tram packed to bursting, thieves squashed against victims
Pickpocket Paradise
Finally, he got close to a businessman in a sport coat. It was one of the last crowded trams of the morning. The mark was hanging onto a ceiling strap with one hand and trying to read a folded newspaper in his other. His jacket was hanging open. Luciano, hating face-to-face work, broke into a sweat. He used a floppy leather portfolio to shield his hand as he slid it against the breast pocket, where he’d seen the weight of a wallet.
His partner Stefano was so close Luciano could smell the espresso on the blocker’s breath. Yet, they never looked at one another. Luciano willed his hand to be steady and light. He willed the mark to keep reading. He hoped the leather [wallet] wouldn’t snag on a fold of fabric.
Pinching the wallet between his middle fingertip and the nail of his first finger, he slipped it out. It was a smooth move—textbook. He slid it down to thigh level along with his brown portfolio, and Stefano’s hand was ready as if by instinct. Stefano then plunged the wallet into his own deep pants pocket, and covered the bulge with a plastic grocery bag. At the next corner he stepped off the tram before it even stopped. Luciano stayed on two blocks longer, heart pounding, then got off and met Stefano midway, as usual.
Stefano had already dumped the leather. They split the proceeds equally.
“Why should the blocker get an equal share?” we had asked Luciano. “The skill is yours. The pressure is on you.”
Eiffel Tower at night. No crowds, no pickpockets, no entry.
The Eiffel Tower was closed due to pickpockets most of Friday. Once again, this so-called “petty crime” has affected tens of thousands. How many people lost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enter the iconic site in Paris? As shown two years ago when the Louvre closed for the same reason, the pickpockets are a powerful force.
Eiffel Tower Pickpockets
You might think well, look at all the people who weren’t pickpocketed on Friday. Wrong, of course. The pickpockets fan out, targeting those same tourists who, already disappointed about missing the Eiffel Tower, congregate nearby before wandering off in the surrounding streets. The Eiffel Tower pickpockets do not take a day off. The Eiffel Tower pickpockets work the Metro, the streets, the cafés, the museums, and all the other crowded attractions in Paris. The Eiffel Tower pickpockets win.
A crowd at the Louvre jostle to see the Mona Lisa, ignoring the prominent pickpocket warning.A pickpocket warning in Paris.
Bob Arno and I have observed, filmed, and spoken with pickpockets for more than 20 years, and we have watched their evolution. In the 1990s in Europe, we saw a preponderance of meek young people, most of whom were dressed in cheap, gaudy, layered ensembles that made them recognizable to anyone who paid attention.
By the turn of the century, most had shed their identifiable costumes and picked up on the latest fashions, including tight jeans, slivers of exposed skin, baseball caps, silvery jewelry, and cool shades. This generation was impossible for the ordinary traveler to identify and, therefore, practiced with formidable success.
At the same time, we began to hear of horrendous violence practiced by a flood of incoming pickpockets. Active thieves we interviewed complained to us of the brute force employed by these newcomers, some of whom might be considered borderline muggers. Newspapers ran articles about jackets being set alight, ensuring that the victim would drop everything to strip and douse the flames while the thief made off with his valuables. Gangs commit robbery by choking, nearly strangling, victims. Bag snatchers pull women to the ground, breaking their bones. Rolex thieves have struggled with victims, causing the death of one tourist in 2011.
The Eiffel Tower pickpockets, like those who worked at the Louvre two years ago, are aggressive and organized. Gangs of pickpockets gain confidence and bravado from one another, surrounding and intimidating their victims with loudness, rapid movements, and many, many hands. Awareness is not enough to resist this M.O. It is vital that valuables be stashed under clothes.
Bosnian pickpocket on the loose in Paris.
Pickpockets love Asian tourists, and Paris today is the most popular destination for the Chinese. The culture difference creates a pickpocket advantage, since Asian visitors don’t know how to fend off these aggressive thieves. Asians also may carry more cash instead of relying on credit cards to the same extent as European visitors. The credit card habit is not as extensive in China as in Europe. This makes Asian tourists especially attractive to pickpockets in Paris, and since every Chinese tourist will visit the Eiffel Tower, the equation is obvious.
Paris pickpocket police are running on hamster wheels. With great patience and persistence, they find and arrest pickpockets every day. They haul them into the station and book them into jail. Next day, they walk, free to continue their trade. They’re freed for a variety of reasons—some as trivial as the pickpocket claiming that this is his first time stealing. And he can do that repeatedly! Since he is allowed to decline both mugshot and fingerprints. The police are frustrated to distraction.
Eiffel Tower employees resorted to going on strike for much of Friday, closing down the Eiffel Tower completely, in an effort to call attention to the pickpocket situation and to get a permanent police presence at the monument. Their frustration stems from their city’s lack of political will. There simply have not been enough undercover officers working in the immediate vicinity of the Eiffel Tower.
A pickpocket in Paris. Would you suspect him?
Paris, being a large city with many tourists and many important sites to visit, has the highest number of pickpocket incidents in Europe. Authorities need to allocate protection in the form of uniformed police officers as well as undercover officers. Paris authorities currently claim there is a 25 percent decline in violent crime (think mugging and aggressive bag snatching) and 23 percent decline in pickpocketing. But street crime statistics are extremely hard to calculate and confirm, and the coming summer summer months are the real bellwether for this type of crime.
It is clear, however, that since the January terror attack France has assumed a more serious attitude to crime and how it affects tourism. But how authorities divide and assign existing law enforcement in order to combat crime is what will eventually create results. And a judicial system that truly follows up and prosecutes offenders according to the law.
In the past, perception among law enforcement officers, and the thieves themselves, has been that Paris has a lax judicial attitude. Thieves are not afraid to commit their crimes and to continue in their trade, even when they have been arrested a few times. In addition, Eiffel Tower pickpockets who specialize in stealing from Asian tourists practice a brazen technique that is especially aggressive and threatening to employees working the grounds. We know how they use “in your face” outbursts as a technique to intimidate those who warn victims of an impending attack.
BBC Newshour interviewed Bob Arno May 22 on the subject of the Eiffel Tower pickpockets. You can hear him 7:48 minutes into the Newshour.
It’s my birthday, and we’re on the road, as usual. This time it’s an okay low-budget hotel in Anchorage. Our plan for a nice dinner was dashed due to the limited nearby options.
(At the diner with the best potential: “What’s best here?” “Well, we serve breakfast all day.” I can take a hint.)
After “breakfast,” I’m about to watch a film in bed, laptop on my lap. Bob says he’ll watch it with me, move over.
“Get on the other side,” I suggest lazily.
“No, move over,” he insists.
So I do. And under the covers, I feel something soft and loose. Something that doesn’t belong in a freshly pulled-back hotel bed.
Squeamish, I leap out of the bed, disgusted. “Ew, they didn’t change the linens! Someone’s left clothes in the bed! I have to call…”
I reach for the phone and Bob bursts out laughing.
Who’s responsible for luggage left in the hotel lobby?
At check-out time, you call a bellman to collect your luggage. You pay your bill, then tip your bellman for loading your bags into a taxi. Did you count your bags? Bellmen at Las Vegas hotels tell me that suitcases are frequently left behind, even when guests are asked to check and sign a luggage release form. Bellmen don’t know whose bags are whose. And, cabbies often drive to the airport with bags that don’t belong to their passengers.
“What happens then?” I asked Ed, a bellman at Mandalay Bay. “Some cabs will bring them back to us. Some leave them at the airport but give us a call and tell us. Others just leave them. Then we have to trace them.”
Hotel luggage storage
Most hotels offer some sort of bag storage for guests. Say check-out is noon and your flight is not until night, or you visit Las Vegas and want to take an overnight bus trip to the Grand Canyon and leave your club-wear behind. Bob and I frequently take advantage of hotel luggage storage, but only after examining the facility.
Who’s watching the luggage? The single harried receptionist?
A large hotel may have a dedicated room with limited access, possibly kept locked, possibly dispensing luggage tags. This is common in, say, Nairobi, where guests headquarter themselves, then take off on safari with light duffel-bags. In small hotels in Venice, in Istanbul, and in Westport, Connecticut, for example, we’ve left bags in the hotel manager’s office, behind his desk.
In Athens recently, the storage option we were offered was out of the question; we opted to rearrange our plans, instead. A motley heap of suitcases were piled in the lobby, with nothing but the desk clerk’s “eye on them.” We’ve passed on adding our bags to rows of others with rope through their handles, and messy mountains of luggage with netting tossed over them.
Dead time. Stuck with luggage in hotel.
Group travelers arriving early, before rooms are available, are urged by their tour leaders to leave their bags and go out. We’re so often amazed at the unclaimed masses of miscellaneous suitcases in hotel lobbies, extracted from the underbellies of tour buses and left unguarded. Just who is responsible? A young dancer in a show we worked in lost her laptop this way. “Just leave your bag there,” she was told on arrival, after flying into Stockholm from New York. When she found her emptied backpack she got plenty of sympathy, but the nebulous question of accountability was never answered.
Judging the safety of hotel bag storage, whether it’s a locked room behind the front desk or organized chaos spread across the lobby floor, means making a personal decision based on your own comfort level. What’s in your luggage? Dirty clothes, or expensive electronic equipment? What kind of luggage is it? Hard-shell with generic locks? Soft-sided with zippers? What about lobby traffic, and how many employees exist to oversee the situation? Like most personal safety issues, only you can weigh potential risks against your particular circumstance. The idea is to make an informed decision, not allow happenstance. At some time or other, you’re bound to make compromises, but with evaluation, you cut your losses.
Suitably spooky site for a psychic school: Arthur Findlay College in Essex, England.
A year ago, psychic swindler Rose Marks was sentenced to more than ten years in federal prison for fleecing clients of her fortune-telling business out of more than $17.8 million. She was 62 years old; she and her family had built a network of psychics, many of whom worked under the professional name Joyce Michael in Ft. Lauderdale and New York City.
One of Rose Marks’s best scams was to “see” the awful (and outrageously convoluted) future of a client, then solicit millions of dollars from the client, bit by bit, in order to perform rituals over the money before returning it. Except, the money was never returned.
At trial, victims testified that Marks “exploited them during vulnerable times in their lives. Victims said the women of the psychic’s family were masterful in their ability to use people’s spiritual or religious beliefs to get them to hand over money and other valuables.”
I always thought psychics had a “gift.”
Turns out, no. They just go to psychic schools. Or seance schools. Or clairvoyant colleges. These institutions have complete curricula of course study in, uh… conning. Courses called Unfoldment into Mediumship, Using Past Life Information in Present Time, Applying Clairvoyant Tools in the Psychic Playground, Trance: How to Sit for its Development, and So You Want to be a Medium are a small sampling from the few psychic schools I surveyed.
Rose Marks is infamous enough to have her own Wikipedia page, and lucky enough to have been trained by her own mother in the Gypsy tradition. She began her psychic career by age nine and later trained her own daughter.
If you don’t have the benefit of maternal training, there are psychic schools. All of them offer comprehensive instruction from beginner to advanced levels.
Psychic Schools
In the class called Stepping into Mediumship at MontClair Metaphysical School in New Jersey, the focus is learning how to “contact someone on the Other Side and to provide proof of their identity, personality and proof of life.”
Proof of life? The “Other Side” means the dead, right? So they’re teaching students how to contact the dead. And they must really teach that—otherwise the school is a sham.
Next, the students are taught how to prove they’ve contacted the correct dead person. Hmmm… mistakes can happen. Kind of like getting your neighbor’s mail in your box. Oops. But it’s the last bit that confuses me most: students are taught how to provide “proof of life.” Of a dead person? Is there life on the “Other Side”? From my perspective then, as an afterlife-nonbeliever, the school teaches how to scam. It is a school of scams, a college of cons, if I comprehend the concept correctly.
Or perhaps I need spiritual help.
Just last month, Psychic Gina was arrested in Fort Collins, Colorado, for bilking $37,000 from a client, with the collusion of her accomplice husband. Psychic Gina Marks is a member of another Marks family’s fortune-telling business; if and how they are related to Rose Marks is unknown.
Who would pay a psychic thousands of dollars for aura-cleansing, curse-lifting, love-finding, or to get through the ordinary difficulties of life? Usually those desperate in the areas of love, loss, health, or career. In the usual progression, the victim visits a psychic storefront for an inexpensive palm reading. Talented fortune-tellers assign homework to their clients, and persuade them to return repeatedly for convoluted rituals that escalate in price. Often, the psychic promises that the funds will be returned when the client’s problems are solved. Countering the failure of promised results, psychics convince clients to return by threatening certain catastrophe, calamity, and misfortune.
It is these advanced fortune-making skills I’d like to read about in the psychic schools’ syllabus: the inveigling, up-selling, cold-reading, deceit, and trickery. Which classes teach those vital skills? What about marketing, costuming, decor, and special effects?
The Psychic School in northern California offers many classes, all by telephone. One is Create Magic and Miracles. Is that the one in which you learn how to make teacups tip over and tables float? Most classes are $200, or you can take the two-year Teachers Program for $4,800. The Psychic School’s site carefully describes each course as self-healing, self-improvement, self-knowledge, and self-awareness. You study to be a psychic in order to read only your own chakra, energy, and dead people, right?
See your money-making abilities skyrocket
However, the Psychic School does point out that “with the development of your clairvoyant abilities, the decisions through which you create your life come with ease, your creativity and money-making abilities skyrocket….” I take that to mean that as a graduated “psychic” (the Teachers Program ends with a “Psychic School Certificate of Graduationg” [sic], there’s no end to the creativity you can use and fees you can charge to scam your clients. Becoming a clairvoyant, you will “create a life filled with insight, creativity, and miracles.” Sounds great!
Let’s have a look at the Berkeley Psychic Institute’s Clairvoyant Training Program, which the institute also refers to as “psychic kindergarten.” It must be child’s play! But no. It’s a two-year, four-phase program of intensive learning and “hands on training from high caliber gifted psychics,” and concludes with “Uncovering your deepest challenges, moving through the fire and slaying the dragons.”
Berkeley Psychic Institute operates the DejaVu Psychic Hotline, where graduates can get instant employment doing telephone and email readings. Email readings? Yes, for $25, one can order an “Email Trance Medium Channeled Healing.”
“We do not consider ourselves as fortune tellers. We are fortune creators,” says the DejaVu Psychic Hotline website. Whose fortunes are being created?
Arthur Findlay College, pictured above and about an hour north of London, calls itself “The Worlds Foremost College for the Advancement of Spiritualism and Psychic Sciences.” Not only can one study mediumship, but also trance mediumship, in which “you will be connected to spirit working with spirit and supported by spirit.” Sounds complicated. And that is the clearest line in the entire course description. Is that an example of the obfuscation taught in the institute? Vital skill for a clairvoyant.
Perhaps the most important course for a psychic medium is Mediumship – Polish Your Performance. Since mediumship is learned—not an innate gift—one must study and practice to become convincing when channeling a spirit from the Other Side. This is “essential for customers not only to return but recommend you to others,” the Arthur Findlay College site says. I’m guessing there’s some overlap with trance mediumship. Arthur Findlay College is international and holds week-long sessions in a multitude of languages including Japanese, Swedish, Italian, Norwegian, German, French, and Finnish. It even markets a course especially for senior citizens.
What do Psychic Schools cost?
What does it cost to become a clairvoyant? A basic week-long course at Arthur Findlay College, say Mediumship & Spiritual Development, costs £570 (about $845) with room and board, double occupancy. Add £9 per person if you want a room with your own bathroom. With more than 80 courses available, a wannabe-psychic can spend a pretty penny.
But everyone knows that a solid education leads to a solid career. Just a few years ago, Psychic Michelle Morgan, of Tarzana, California, raked in almost a million from a single client, a young man whom she determined was suffering from a love curse. Psychic Michelle was patient; she kept her 25-year-old mark dependent on her rituals for two years, urging him to borrow more and more money to fund his psychic sessions. The skills she honed allowed her to entrap and ensnare her victims and exploit them for much more than they were worth. Like all those in her field, silver-tongued Psychic Michelle’s talent was unctuous smooth-talk, glib persuasion, and creative conning. Presumably, the 25-year-old million-dollar-client wasn’t Psychic Michelle’s only client.
So what does a clairvoyant college curriculum really teach? How does an institute prepare a student medium for a career in clairvoyance? Does it really teach curse-lifting, money-purifying, and soul-swapping? Are the students taught how to scam and con their clients? Or are the students themselves scammed by the schools?
Closing up our Stockholm house, I’ve been selling things on the local version of Craig’sList. Many items sell in the first day, even in the first hour after an ad goes live. Most buyers don’t try to bargain; they simply pay the asking price. Sure, that’s partly the Swedish character. Pricing items low has a lot to do with it, too.
After success with many items, I decide to list our car, a 15-year-old Saab in almost-new condition with only 83,000 miles and not a thing wrong with it.
The phone rings a few minutes after the ad is posted. The caller wants the car! He makes a half-hearted attempt to lower the price and Bob, who has taken the call, agrees to the little discount. The caller says he’s in Uppsala, a nearby university town, and it will take him a little more than an hour to drive down with a friend. Okay. The caller asks for explicit driving directions, and Bob gives it. The caller tells us to take the ad offline, since he’s coming to get the car. Bob says sure and finally hangs up.
Car Scam!
Bob relates all this to me and I become a little testy. What do you mean you agreed to a discount? Of course I’m not going to take the ad down! Not until I’ve actually sold the car. And who calls to say they’ll buy the car sight-unseen, instead of saying they’ll come take a look at it?
Several minutes later, I get an email from “Joel,” who writes that it sounds like a good deal, when can he come see the car? I tell Joel that we have buyers on the way, but come tomorrow morning unless I write that it’s been sold.
The scammer kept his car idling the entire 40 minutes he tried to rip us off.
Uppsala guy calls again. He’s driving, and in a chatty mood. He asks Bob endless personal questions. Overhearing Bob’s replies, alarm bells begin to toll in my head. The guy asks for driving directions again. Bob gives him turn-by-turn instructions. It sounds as if they’re close, since Bob is naming nearby streets and landmarks. They couldn’t be here already, all the way from Uppsala.
Anyway, what kind of people don’t have GPS nowadays, I’m wondering. Why are they asking for the same simple directions over and over? It occurs to me that they’re simply tying up the phone line, trying to prevent competing buyers from getting through.
The Uppsala guy and his friend arrive. They couldn’t have driven all the way from Uppsala so quickly. Bob goes outside to show them the car. I observe from the upstairs window like a suspicious witch.
The car scammer showed a “database” on his phone that proved how bad our car actually was.
It’s dark and below freezing outside. An icy wind numbs my face at the open window. They’re speaking Swedish below. Long conversations. Wild gesticulating. Brief looks inside the car and under the hood. The guy from Uppsala starts the engine and complains about the look of the exhaust, but he never asks to drive the car. Meanwhile, the friend’s SUV is idling.
Bob tramps upstairs. “The car has a ton of problems! It’s a year older than you claim in your ad. The odometer has been rolled back. It’s had ten owners before us. And there’s water in the oil. He made a low offer, but I think we should take it.”
I explode. “Why do you believe him? He’s a scammer!”
“He showed me the car’s history on a website.”
“Right—on his smartphone! His phone with internet and GPS and maps. Why do you think he kept you on the phone for 20 minutes asking excruciating details about how to get here? He just wanted to keep the phone busy so you couldn’t take any other calls!”
“Let’s take it. Saab’s bankrupt, the car might not sell at all.”
“It’s the first day! The first hour! And I already have another interested person. A guy who wants to see the car before he buys it.”
“I’ll try to get the price up a little then…”
“No. In fact, forget that discount you agreed to on the phone. For this guy, the price has just gone up. Full price in cash, or nothing.” I am a witch.
Don’t sell your car to this guy? He’s a scammer, a fraudster, and a con artist.
Bob goes back downstairs disappointed. The witch put in the ad, photographed the car, and therefore gets final word on the sale. The SUV has been idling all this time. Ready for a quick get-away? Foul fumes float into my face at the window. The scammer persists and keeps Bob in negotiation for another 15 minutes before he finally speeds off.
I email Joel and tell him the sale didn’t go through. He comes over immediately to look at the car, test drives it, asks to see its “besiktiningar,” an official document showing any work done prior to the car’s last registration. Joel tells me the car is a great deal at the asking price, and buys it. He pays cash.
Sold, in under two hours.
And the next day Joel returns to help us with an errand for which we need a car. We did not expect the car to sell so quickly. Nice guy, Joel.
I wonder how Uppsala guy would have paid, had we made a deal. Just guessing: he’d flash cash, but not enough—oh, sorry, that’s all I could get from the cash machine—then offer to pay more than the agreed price via PayPal—a phony account. Or… no. Why then, bother to negotiate at all? Because by then, we’d be convinced we’d never sell the car, it’s such a mess. Or is he a “short-changer” who knows how to fold cash to make it look like more than it is? This part, we’ll never know.
Most interesting: what happened to Bob’s scam-sensor? Why did he fall for this con artist’s story? Okay, the scammer must have been smooth. (They all are.) He was prepared with fake “evidence.” And we’d dealt with so many honest buyers before this one. And Swedes are pretty decent, on the whole. Bob’s guard was down. Yeah. Excuses, excuses. Reminder: we can all be taken. Stay alert!
Fehim Hamidovic, convicted chief of the Hamidovic pickpocket networkFagin—heard of him? An 1837 fiction.
Hamidovic—know that name? He’s an actual, living, pickpocket kingpin. Reality.
Hamidovic, arrested in late 2010, ran a network of hundreds, possibly thousands, of child pickpockets across Europe. He rounded up the underage kids, mostly Eastern European girls, and forced them to steal.
Hamidovic Pickpocket Gang
Forced! They were threatened with violence (including rape and cigarette burns) if they failed to bring in 300-1,000 euros each day. Not angels to begin with and already used to a rough life, once under Hamidovic’s leadership their treatment was brutal.
The children are all under 13, or so they claim—too young to be held by police. Their actual ages are unknown. When arrested, the young thieves all have the same answers. Name? Hamidovic. Age? 12. Police have no choice but to release them.
Pickpockets on break. Eight of the 10 we met in a Paris gang, moments before they returned to work.
300-1,000 euros each day. That explains the persistence and brazenness of the child pickpockets in Paris we observed and spoke with a few months ago. And it explains the 1.3 million euros Hamidovic is said to have netted in just one year. Not to mention his fancy houses, Porsche, and six-figure casino visits. And perhaps it explains why Hamidovic, living the luxe life, reported no income. (“Occupation: organized crime boss.”)
Hamidovic and his underthugs in the Hamidovic pickpocket network trained their little criminals to target Asians when possible, because Hamidovic believed Asians carried more cash and were easy victims. But anyone is fair game in the steal business. In the Paris Metro, we watch clusters of 8-12 child pickpockets fan out and flit from target to target, fast, fleet, unapologetic when noticed.
Fehim Hamidovic, from former Yugoslavia, was 58 when he was arrested along with his wife and two sons. He was 60 when sentenced to seven years in prison. Believing that the Hamidovic pickpocket network was responsible for two-thirds or more of thefts on the country’s Metro, French authorities breathed a sigh of relief. They had dismantled the network. They’d taken down the boss.
“This ‘beast’ will soon have a new head,” said The Mysterious Monsieur F., our official source in Paris, when Hamidovic was finally caught. “The arrest of the chief of the Hamidovic pickpocket network did not change anything, they are always there. And they make a carnage!”
Skipping and singing, the pickpockets lead us out of the subway and into Place Pigalle, a safe place to talk.
“Nobody sees these ‘clouds’ of pickpockets, even though they are not especially discreet. The Hamidovic ‘work’ very well but they are not wary. It is not a problem—there is no risk of prison for them.”
So—the head of the pickpocket gang, this modern-day Fagin, is finally off the streets. Yet, the Hamidovic pickpocket network is alive and well.
A brother, a sister, a nephew, and others have stepped in to perpetuate the gang that authorities call a well-oiled machine and “a powerful entity, perennial, professional”, and “vast network of human trafficking,” “an underground economy, with earnings and protection.” As well as Paris, the vast network operated throughout France, in Belgium, Spain, and Italy.
The Hamidovic pickpocket network grabs headlines, to the exclusion of their also-numerous competitors. The Mysterious Monsieur F. laments:
“The French news reports show only the Hamidovic, causing many people to think that all France’s pickpockets are girls of 12 or 14 years. When announcements are made in the subway stations, the travelers look only for the Hamidovic!
“France’s pickpocket situation is under-estimated. I am ashamed for my country when visitors become victims as of their first steps in France. The Hamidovic can become violent. If a person shouts “pickpocket!” they spit. It is dangerous because many claim to have pneumonia.
“The judgment of Fehim Hamidovic did not change the situation of the thefts in the subway. They are still numerous and sometimes violent.”
